Why Cisco Catalyst 6500

Note: network upgrades cannot only focus on performance improvement, because the speed brings a temporary pleasure to the IT department ...... Cisco's IT department considers other factors when upgrading the LAN, such as management, maintenance, and spare parts ......

In many cases, Cisco first tries to solve the difficulties it encounters and designs corresponding solutions. After the Cisco IT team tests and deploys these solutions, Cisco uses them for the customer's network. In the past, Cisco's IT team installed the most appropriate device, which was often the latest, when needed to expand the network. Generally, these devices are brand new for customers, and even for IT teams. With the development of time, the network used by Cisco headquarters in San Jose has gradually become a patchwork of products of different series and times. Although this hodgedge is made up of a large amount of work accumulated in the past, such a network is undoubtedly not easy to manage, and the maintenance cost is very high.

By the end of 1990s, rapid development posed a challenge to San Jose's headquarters. Cisco LAN is located in two locations: the original Tasman campus and the new Zanker campus, 2/3 miles apart. Cisco needs to effectively and economically Connect 50 offices distributed across the two San Jose campuses. Connecting to these locations is a challenging task because high-speed networks are required to transmit data and applications. Because the infrastructure is very complex, it is usually difficult to determine the impact of adding new applications on network traffic and the network itself. Importantly, the network must be able to meet future application needs. Although all devices can work normally, there is no unified standard for the entire enterprise. Due to the lack of standards, network management becomes increasingly difficult, and management costs increase significantly. In addition, costs for supporting spare parts, replacements and training for various products also increase significantly.

In addition to manageability, future applications also impose more stringent network requirements-both in concept and practice. IP phones are gradually developing into a very important application, which will prompt the IT team to rethink the Network Design of San Jose headquarters. Network convergence-transmitting data and voice over the same network-will save Cisco's long-term expenditure and serve as a platform for future development. However, in the short term, it will put heavy pressure on a diverse platform that forms the Cisco network infrastructure.

Cisco Catalyst 6500 switch and Gigabit Ethernet

The solution must meet three requirements. First, the IT team needs to plan and deploy good connections between the two campuses. Secondly, it must develop a standard strategy for a single platform to support the increasing demand of employees for data, voice and new applications. Finally, it must be able to adapt to unexpected future application needs. Cisco has discovered that two technologies can meet the above requirements: Gigabit Ethernet and Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switches.

The Catalyst 6500 switch has strong QoS capabilities to support Ethernet power supply, which is ready for the future use of IP phones in large quantities. Because of its strong routing computing capabilities, it is no problem to act as a router for the LAN and man, and the Catalyst 6500 is like a Swiss Army knife. You can add a WAN module as a router and a security module as a firewall, it can also be used as a VPN product. Such a general platform provides a standardized solution for the IT department to provide predictable application behavior for management personnel and improve the cost efficiency of management, training, spare parts and maintenance. This is why the Cisco IT team abandoned the more powerful 12000 series routers on key nodes in the WAN and man networks.

In the Internet, Cisco uses Gigabit Ethernet for backbone networks, both LAN and man. This combination of optical fiber and capacity provides the desired performance and bandwidth between the two campuses. Establishing Gigabit Ethernet over a LAN has many advantages: it can ensure sufficient bandwidth, and after deployment, we do not need to worry about new configurations or add new optical fibers ." In addition, a separate redundant physical path must be provided for this optical fiber to ensure that any optical fiber failure will not cause network interruption.

Results

The support for IP phones and connections between the two campuses means that the Cisco IT team must rebuild the Cisco network in a unified manner. The results are remarkable. Availability has been greatly improved. The availability of the campus LAN network exceeds 99.995%, and the availability of the fully protected data center reaches 99.998%, which means that the annual unexpected downtime is less than 12 minutes.

The IT team found that by using a unified diagnostic interface and standard configuration on a single hardware platform, they can more easily discover and diagnose faults. When administrators need to fix faults, their efficiency and speed are greatly improved. Network interruptions rarely occur. Even if they occur, they do not last for a long time.

The same network layout makes it easier to predict the possibility of failure. The team can prevent faults in all office buildings after discovering the defects, because each office building has the same network architecture.

Cisco users have seen significant benefits. Gigabit connections allow them to transfer files, access data centers more quickly, and use IP phones that are much more powerful than analog phones on each desktop.

Next step

The Cisco IT team plans to deploy 10 GB Ethernet at the network core to further improve network performance because of its great success in the Gigabit Ethernet field. Cisco IT is still evaluating other technologies, such as using IP-based small computer system interfaces (iSCSI) protocol to expand the Fiber Channel Optical fiber and its connected storage devices to IP servers between data centers, which may further increase the demand for Bandwidth growth on the backbone network of the San Jose campus. What is the network address? 0 GB Ethernet also allows Cisco IT department to expand Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop. "In the future network expansion process, we will use the Cisco Catalyst 6500 series platform to provide users with 10/100/Mbps Ethernet," Huegen added.

In addition, the Team continues to examine some new features of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 series and plans to launch them. Cisco IT has used the network access module (NAM) and NAM-2 blade module on Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switches in the data center and the campus distribution Layer Gateway, in order to provide application-level visibility for network infrastructure, so as to achieve real-time traffic analysis, performance monitoring and fault diagnosis. In addition, Cisco IT is planning to use other Cisco Catalyst 6500 series service modules in some new areas:

The high-performance Cisco Firewall service module is used in the Internet gateway and data center gateway to support Layer 2 and Layer 3 Firewall Policy Check and stateful fault recovery.

Using the new Cisco Content exchange module, the Cisco Network provides content exchange services for any new application or application architecture that covers multiple servers (servers in the Cisco Catalyst 6500 series pool of data centers.

The SSL service module is used on the same or adjacent Cisco Catalyst 6500 series service switch in the data center to accelerate SSL traffic performance for Secure Web applications.

By using the Cisco Communication Media module (CMM) in the onsite sales office, the integrated T1 service is provided for locations connected to a Cisco Catalyst 6500 series distribution layer.

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